Guardian Druid Changes in 8.2 - Feedback on the Spec So Far

This article will discuss the recent changes made to the Guardian Druid on the 8.2 Rise of Azshara PTR and will cover all the recent buffs to Guardian Druid on the PTR, discuss how these changes impact the spec and cover what else Guardian Druid could use to make it more fun to play.

Faide is a Guardian theorycrafter, moderator, and expert in the Dreamgrove discord, and maintainer and contributor to Dreamgrove.gg a website for Druid theorycrafting and resources. You can follow him on Twitter.

In Patch 8.2, Guardian is receiving numerous buffs in an effort to address our poor performance in the first half of the expansion.

Opinions

First, the good.

Being able to cast our dispel in Forma d'Orso is undeniably a good change, and fulfills one of the Guardian community’s oldest gripes. Especially with dispels being so important in both M+ and raids, this is a great change.

The Rage tweaks are also quite nice; increasing the amount of spenders we can cast will improve both survivability and damage output. Being able to get Vello di Ferro up more quickly at the start of combat is also a welcome improvement. The Vello di Ferro stack cap increase is in response to these changes, since it is now possible in some (very niche) situations to exceed 6 stacks of Vello di Ferro.

Finally, the damage buffs to Dilaniamento and Falciata should help with snap threat, another pain point for Druids in BFA.

Now, the less good.

The change to Rigenerazione Furiosa is awkward. On the one hand, it is a direct increase to survivability in situations when you’d rely on your own self-healing to survive. On the other, the increased cost effectively negates the Rage buffs and eats into your Rage budget. It may actually prevent you from casting it in some situations where you need to pool Rage for Vello di Ferro, where you wouldn’t have had to delay it before. You have no control over how much additional Rage is spent (as it always spends as much as you have available), and the spell now becomes less efficient the more Rage you spend on it, in terms of the healing per Rage spent.

As a result, it’s hard to classify the Rigenerazione Furiosa change as a buff. If the goal was to improve the spell, there are many simpler, better ways to do it: Take it off the global cooldown; lower the spell’s 36 second recharge; increase its healing output; or even revert it to its Legion behavior (where the amount it healed scaled with how much damage you’d taken).

Wishlist

The sheer amount of buffs Guardian is getting (and has gotten) over the course of the expansion is indicative of how much we lost with the removal of the artifact and legendaries after Legion. Even so, I think the changes coming in 8.2 are conservative and that there’s more that can be done to bring Guardian up to the level of the top tanks.

Tuning and numerical changes aside, however, there exists a deeper problem with Guardian: The spec just isn’t that fun to play. So much of what made Guardian feel interesting and engaging to play from Legion is gone in BFA:

All of these added up to a spec that felt both good and rewarding to play, and that’s missing from the BFA version. I don’t believe this is fixable without a total rework of the Guardian kit, which is unlikely to happen in a mid-expansion patch.

Bearing that in mind, here are some stopgap changes that could be made to improve the state of Guardian, within the scope of a mid-expansion patch:

Take Rigenerazione Furiosa off the GCD. This one is a no-brainer; Frenzied Regen feels terrible on the GCD, and especially with the new cost it feels excessively punishing not to at least have full control over when we can cast it.

Restore the slow component of Falciata. Druids are the only tank that cannot, as part of their kit, slow mobs (or leap away) to facilitate kiting.

Buff Mastery. The current Mastery tuning is a vestige of Legion, where it made sense for Guardians not to have excessively high health because of all the other defensive tools we had available. Now that those are gone, it would be nice to restore the “high health damage sponge” identity that we used to have, to distinguish Guardian from the other tanks.

Increase maximum Rage to 120, or 150. Right now it’s very hard to take advantage of burst Rage gain from Arruffamento Pelliccia, since the Rage you gain must be spent almost immediately in order to prevent it from being wasted. With the addition of the Perla delle Intenzioni Evidenti essence in 8.2, this will be even more difficult. Increasing the Rage cap would allow us to pool and dump Rage more strategically, allowing for player skill to play a bigger role in differentiating good tanks and great tanks.

Give us a baseline Berserk-style cooldown that is replaced with Incarnazione: Guardiano di Ursoc when selected. I’ve gone back and forth on this one, since having an “Incarn-lite” would devalue the talent itself, but ultimately having a baseline offensive cooldown is worth the trade (and besides, it’s nothing a little tuning can’t fix).

Commento di brainimpalement

Commento di Nutcheck

on 2019-05-07T23:46:07-05:00

"Take Frenzied Regeneration off the GCD." LOUDER

Commento di wrighwj

on 2019-05-07T23:47:27-05:00

Give us a baseline Berserk-style cooldown that is replaced with Incarnation: Guardian of Ursoc when selected. I’ve gone back and forth on this one, since having an “Incarn-lite” would devalue the talent itself, but ultimately having a baseline offensive cooldown is worth the trade (and besides, it’s nothing a little tuning can’t fix).

This right here has probably been my biggest gripe about what they did to bears. We lost Berserk, but gained RotS in Legion. And it should've been reverted after losing RotS

Commento di frostyfire14

on 2019-05-08T00:24:15-05:00

Agree. If anything at the very least, buff mastery, and return the slow to Thrash.

Guardian should be the iconic meatshield like the writer said. Having less health than a vengeance demon hunter whose item level is the same as mine is sad.

Commento di Wigglez50

on 2019-05-08T00:36:09-05:00

Blizzard needs to read this. The person who wrote this knows what it truly needs and blizzard doesnt! REVERT FRENZY

Commento di GrimmHooke

on 2019-05-08T01:15:01-05:00

Agreed so hard on Frenzied Regen. Taking it off the GCD is an *absolute must*, and if I could, I'd swap it back to the Legion format, where it healed based on damage taken. It gave the Druid some nice decisions to make - do I take the hit and FR the health back, or do I mitigate with Ironfur and let the healer heal off the damage, saving the FR for something later?

I'd also like to see Ursol's Vortex be standard or for Thrash to slow enemies again, which would help with keeping them on us in M+. Someone @ the devs with this article!

Commento di krevantis

on 2019-05-08T01:21:08-05:00

We need something to help with magic damage too. I curse Blizzard for removing Mark of Ursol instead of just fixing it.

Commento di lovelywaz

on 2019-05-08T01:35:40-05:00

Agree on pretty much everything in Wishlist. I will also add to having a magic damage reduction ability.

Anyone remember Mark of Ursol? It was removed ONLY because we had plenty of other stuff in our toolkit from Artifact Weapon and Legendaries as listed above and felt really OP having that as well. Bears really need a magic damage taken reduction ability or give them 20% more HP than other tanks like good old bears used to be!

Commento di Espinas

on 2019-05-08T01:51:55-05:00

Why people keep bringing up legion legendaries? I get it, they were really good but they are gone now so we should look forward not backward

Commento di Shadowtek

on 2019-05-08T02:30:18-05:00

give rage of the sleeper as a talent...alot of the other classes and specs got their artifact skill as a talent with the rest of the changes...i miss dwarfing the other tank specs on hp as a guardian druid

Commento di Sesyl91

on 2019-05-08T03:37:27-05:00

Why people keep bringing up legion legendaries? I get it, they were really good but they are gone now so we should look forward not backward

Maybe because it's been 8 months, but some specs still feel incomplete and awkward to play w/o artifacts and legendaries

Commento di lovelywaz

on 2019-05-08T05:06:49-05:00

Why people keep bringing up legion legendaries? I get it, they were really good but they are gone now so we should look forward not backward

Because pretty much all other tanks got some of the abilities back or new or others buffed. Bears on the other hand were the biggest losers and they didn't gain anything good.

Commento di prophet001

on 2019-05-08T06:55:21-05:00

Why people keep bringing up legion legendaries? I get it, they were really good but they are gone now so we should look forward not backward

I agree. Guardian isn't better or worse imo it's just different.

To say that pushing this button is more rewarding than pushing that button just seems silly to me.

Also, there is no complexity to any tank. BDK is just 3 buttons, Vengeance is 3 buttons, Pally is 3 buttons. None of them have any more or less complexity than Druids.

Commento di kutana

on 2019-05-08T07:28:07-05:00

I must have missed this change somewhere, but isn't the maximum DR from Armor capped at 75%? I remember this was the case back in BC/Wrath, and I don't recall them ever removing the cap. Is there still a cap to DR from Armor?

Commento di AzraelUltima

on 2019-05-08T07:58:29-05:00

I must have missed this change somewhere, but isn't the maximum DR from Armor capped at 75%? I remember this was the case back in BC/Wrath, and I don't recall them ever removing the cap. Is there still a cap to DR from Armor?

I think they changed it to 85% in Legion.

I think the idea with FR is that you're supposed to use it when non-physical damage is your primary concern, so losing IFs for it wouldn't be that big a deal.

Commento di docseuzz

on 2019-05-08T08:23:48-05:00

My ultimate wishlist for druids is to allow (maybe via talent) to retain the passive bonuses of your last shapeshift form for 5-7 seconds after changing - allows druids to have significant power, but behind a strong skill cap. We're still treated like 'warrior-lite', or meat-sponge - I'd rather have our tank identity be related to rapid shape-shifting - feel like being a strong self-healing tank? Pick resto affinity, and cast heals while still a tank (for a short window). Want to be DPS strong? pick feline/boomkin, and weave in damage. Even without the specific affinity, would provide much more engaging gameplay... M+ resto druids (at MDI level) are already showing the fun ways to push this model - as tanks we can't lose our passive mitigation to play that game. I'm not suggesting keeping all the benefits, but just the passive ones...

oh, and FR off the GCD, FFS... ;)

Commento di Hulkamus

on 2019-05-08T08:39:26-05:00

Please, read this post Blizzard! FR must come off the GCD, return FR to how it was in Legion, and buff mastery or give us Mark of Ursol lite.Just removing FR from the GCD and buffing mastery alone would make guardian more competitive. Great changes and steps in the right direction though. Still need a wee bit more though.

Commento di Hulkamus

on 2019-05-08T08:49:04-05:00

Removed

Commento di Nahela

on 2019-05-08T08:54:29-05:00

I must have missed this change somewhere, but isn't the maximum DR from Armor capped at 75%? I remember this was the case back in BC/Wrath, and I don't recall them ever removing the cap. Is there still a cap to DR from Armor?

There is, but also boss encounters nerf your effective Armor by an extreme amount. I can hit 78-79% DR on my paladin with SotR, but vs a Mythic BoD boss that's only 66-68%.